Yesterday, I blogged about Lady Pink. Not Mary Kay Ash, the founder of the American cosmetics’ company involved in skin care, makeup and body care – which, by the way, is also associated with the color pink.
Remember the pink Cadillac? The only people who get to drive in pink Cadillac splendor are sales superstars whose multilevel sales teams have sold at least $100,000 in Mary Kay products in six months. It’s one of the most easily recognized sales incentive in the world.
And she chose pink just so to match the color of her cosmetics compact, if you must know.
Image credit: http://www.liladeweber.com/about-lila.html
This flamboyant person, this brains behind the beauty enterprise is Hasmiza Othman (or more popularly referred to as Dato' Dr. Vida).
I prefer to call her Lady Pink!
She's made her fortune in the beauty business. Meaning, Vida's wealth is built upon a human weakness: insecurity.
Her Qu Puteh line of products bases itself on the premise that only fair women are attractive. The latest marketing for that line promotes slimness, bustiness and even nubility as qualities that her customers should strive for.
Her pomegranate and gamat-based Pamoga elixir is an even more dubious exercise in what I can only term as pseudo-science. Priced at RM145 per 500ml bottle, Vida makes the preposterous claim that it is able to “cure” 30 illnesses, ranging from diabetes and Alzheimer’s, to low IQ and paralysis. It gives you the impression that her customers are an easy mark.
Of course, Vida Beauty are not the sole offender of this kind of exploitation.
Other companies hawking similar type products also make equally ridiculous claims. Take, for example, Aliff Syukri’s D’Herbs that sell everything from raisins that promise to make you clever, to goat’s milk that claims to help with pregnancy, to superfood elixir Arjuna Maxx that supposedly increases virility, to Payu Up Collagen that claims to increase bust size, and even cock rings, which he spectacularly named “Cincin Pacak Arjuna”.
I am told these kind of products are popular among Malay women – okay, maybe not the cock rings (unless they are buying them for their partners)!
Vida is using her purported PhD in Biology, to carry the title and name “Dr Vida”, to lend credibility to her products. It is said that she had previously claimed her PhD was from one Charles Molnar University from Hungary – coincidentally among the five universities linked to a 2012 bust against a Subang Jaya company which issued fake degrees.
By the time Vida was interviewed by Utusan Malaysia last year, she had changed her tune and avowed that her PhD was from Monash University instead. That is, if you believe her.
Of course, you would have known by now that five days ago, Malaysia's MOH have issued a ban on one of her Qu Puteh’s products – the Qu Puteh Whitening Pro 9 cream which was found to contain “high levels” of mercury.
Already, the Brunei Health Ministry had banned two Qu Puteh products for supposedly containing harmful products. They must mean 'mercury' and mercury is definitely harmful.
You may or may not know this but many skin creams, beauty and antiseptic soaps or lotions do contain mercury and these products are marketed as skin lighteners and anti-aging treatments that remove age spots, freckles, blemishes and wrinkles. Also, adolescents may use them as acne treatments. FYI, the FDA do not permit mercury in cosmetics or in drugs except under very specific conditions.
Even as she pulled the problematic products from the market, she insisted she had never encountered any product-related problems before. Nonetheless, she promised a detailed, in-depth analysis on the said products. Did she mean that prior to this, she had been blissfully unaware that her products were harmful? Hmmmm...
Anyway, she has a product range that is mind-boggling – here's a small sample:
Lady Pink is really raking it in!
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